1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, particularly to an image forming apparatus with an adaptive automatic layout function for scaling and rearranging image data in accordance with a sheet size and a desired layout at the time of printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when an image forming apparatus outputs the document created by a document processing apparatus or the like, print setting is performed. In print setting, an n in 1 print function of printing by allocating image data of n pages in a piece of paper, and a scaling function of fitting image data to a designated sheet size by scaling the image data have been frequently used.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-238289 proposes the method for restricting the character size of a document to be outputted not to be below a certain size. In this method, the lower limit of the recognizable character size differs depending on the kind of font and the kind of character (Japanese hiragana, Chinese characters and alphabets).
However, in the above described scaling function, when the image data is excessively reduced to be adapted into a determined area, the characters may become unrecognizable, and thin lines may not be printed.